True Prayer, Must be on Fire

Tip! Nothing short of being white hot for God, can keep the glow of heaven in our hearts, these chilly days.

The dampening of the flame of holy desire is destructive of the vital and aggressive forces in church life. God requires to be represented by a fiery Church, or He is not in any proper sense, represented at all. God, Himself, is all on fire, and His Church, if it is to be like Him, must also be at the level of "white hot" heat.

The great and eternal interests of heaven-born, God-given religion are the only things about which His Church that can afford to be on fire. Yet holy zeal needs not to be picky in order to be a consuming fire. Our Lord was in person the exact opposite of nervous excitability, the absolute opposite of intolerant or clamorous declamation, yet the zeal of God's house consumed Him; and the world is still feeling the glow of His fierce, consuming flame and responding to it, with an ever-increasing readiness and an ever-enlarging response.

A lack of passion in prayer is the sure sign of a lack of depth and of intensity of desire; and the absence of intense desire is a sure sign of God's absence from the heart! To grow less in eagerness is to retire from God. He can, and does, tolerate many things in the way of shortcomings and error in His children. He can, and will pardon sin when we pray for forgiveness, but two things that are intolerable to Him -- insincerity and being lukewarm. Lack of heart and lack of heat are two things He hates, and to the Laodiceans He said, in terms of unmistakable severity and condemnation:

"I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of My mouth."

Tip! A person's character is always demonstrated in their behavior. The Savior again said,"A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good ..." -- Luke 6:45

This was God's expressed judgment on the lack of fire in one of the Seven Churches. It is also His indictment against us His children for the fatal want of sacred enthusiasm. In prayer, fire is the driving power. Religious principles that do not emerge in this flame have neither force nor effect. This flame is the wing on which our faith grows; fervency is the soul of our prayer.

It was the "fervent, effectual prayer" that availed much. Love is kindled in a flame, and fervency is its life. This Flame is the air that we as true Christian can experience breathing. It feeds on fire; it can withstand anything. It is not a feeble flame that dies, chilled and starved to its core, every time the surrounding atmosphere becomes frigid or lukewarm.

True prayer, must be aflame. Our Christian life and character need to be all on fire. Lack of spiritual heat creates more disloyalty than the lack of faith. Not to be intensely consumed in the things of heaven is not to be interested in them at all. The fiery souls are those who conquer in the day of battle, from whom the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and who take it by force. The citadel of God is taken only by those, who storm it in dreadful earnestness, who besiege it, with fiery, unabated zeal.

Desire is Our will in Prayer

Tip! In order to accomplish His high purpose, Jesus showed us His purpose in answering our prayers when He said, "...That the Father may be glorified in the Son."

In prayer, we are fastened to the Name, merit and intercessory asset of Jesus Christ, our great High Priest. If we search down, below the accompanying conditions and forces in prayer, we will come to its key basis, which is contained in the human heart. It is not simply our need; it is our heart's yearning for what we need, and for what we feel impelled to pray for.

Desire is our will in action; a strong, conscious longing, excited in our inner nature, for some great good. Desire exalts the object we are longing for, and fixes our mind on it. It has choice, is immovable, has a fire in it; based on this or prayer is explicit and specific. It knows its need, feels and sees the thing that will meet it, and we hurry to obtain it.

Holy desire is helped by spiritual thought. Meditation on our spiritual need, and on God's readiness and ability to correct it, helps our desire to grow. Serious thought engaged in before praying, increases desire, makes it more insistent, and tends to save us from the menace of private prayer -- wandering thought. We fail much more in desire, than our outward expressions show. We retain the form and act spiritual, while our inner life fades and almost dies.

We should ask ourselves, whether the feebleness of our desires for God, the Holy Spirit, and for all the fullness of Christ, is the cause of our so little praying, and of our laziness in the exercise of prayer? Do we really feel the inward pulling of desire after heavenly treasures? Do the deep-seated groanings of desire stir our souls to mighty struggles?

Sadly for us! The fire burns altogether too low. The flaming heat of our soul has been toned down to a halfhearted lukewarm tickle. This, remember, was the central cause of the sad and desperate condition of the Laodicean Christians. The awful condemnation is written that they were "rich, and increased in goods and had need of nothing," and knew not that they "were wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind."

Again: I must ask - do we have that desire which presses us into close communion with God, which is filled with unutterable burnings, and holds us there through the agony of an intense and soul-stirred prayer? Our hearts need to be worked over so much, not only to get the evil out of them, but to get the good into them. And the foundation and inspiration to the incoming good, is strong, propelling desire.

This holy and eager flame in the soul awakens the interest of heaven, attracts the attention of God, and places at the disposal of those who exercise it, the exhaustless riches of Divine grace.

Exceptional

Amazing Grace